EE ready for more than 200,000 Power Bar swaps at Glastonbury

Thursday, May 21st 2015by Ellen Branagh

Glastonbury festival-goers will be able to benefit from the world’s largest festival mobile phone charging operation, EE has announced.

The operator, in its third year as Glastonbury Festival’s official technology and communications partner, is offering two Power Bar Exchange points this year, able to accommodate more than 200,000 Power Bar swaps during the festival weekend.

The Power Bar holds enough power to charge the average handset once, allowing users to charge their phone on the go.

Once it runs out, they can simply swap it for a fully-charged one at a designated exchange site.

The portable chargers were launched at Glastonbury last year as a queue-busting alternative to traditional charging.

Spencer McHugh, director of brand at EE, said: “Our Power Bar phone charging initiative began at Glastonbury in 2014 and proved so popular that we launched it last month as a year-round loyalty scheme for all customers.

“We received over a million requests in just four days, so to say there is huge demand for this simple charging solution is an understatement, and at festivals the need for a fully-charged phone is even greater.”

He said last year, customers uploaded the equivalent of 1.5m pictures during the festival and downloaded 2.5TB of data – the same as 650,000 songs.

“To meet this demand we are rolling out the EE Power Bar swap scheme on an unprecedented scale.

“For us, this is just the next step in making the UK’s best-loved festival even better connected.”

Anyone wanting to take advantage of the swapping system on-site at Glastonbury must have an official 2015 EE Power Bar. Last year’s ‘Festival Power Bar’ will not be accepted as part of this year’s swap scheme.

They will need to register for a special wristband by the 7 June, which allows one swap per day.

Short of supplies

EE Power Bars are available – subject to stock availability – to all EE, Orange or T-Mobile customers for free, while non-EE customers can pay £20 to take part in the swapping scheme.

Last month, EE announced it was taking a “pause” from its Power Bar promotion after receiving a million requests in just four days.

The company made free Power Bars available to its customers on 16 April but an unprecedented level of demand left it short of supplies.

EE said as the loyalty scheme is current on a pause, any customer going to Glastonbury will be contacted on 26 May and asked to register for a special code.

Glastonbury Power Bar stock has been safeguarded to make sure it can fulfil demand, the provider said.

For those who do not want to use the Power Bar service, there will also be traditional charging at Glastonbury’s Worthy Farm site this year.

The EE Recharge tent will offer festival-goers, irrespective of which network they are on, a space to recharge their mobile devices free of charge.

For the third year running, EE’s 4G network will be available on the site.

EE’s on-site network infrastructure, which features six mobile masts, is expected to carry more than 3TB of data across the weekend.

The company is also working with Glastonbury Festival to update the official Glastonbury app, which is hoped to allow those on site to stay better.

Last year the app was accessed more than 3m times, with a total of nearly nine years of combined usage.

Why do we need your postcode?

Once you enter your postcode, Cable.co.uk will perform a live lookup and check all the available providers in your area.

This ensures you receive accurate information on the availability of providers and packages in your area.